This application is based on and incorporates herein by reference Japanese Patent Applications No. 2000-187745 filed Jun. 22, 2000 and No. 2001-118182 filed Apr. 17, 2001.
The present invention relates to an integrated vehicle control system for integratedly controlling a plurality of components such as an engine or an automatic transmission mounted on a vehicle.
In recent years, for controlling a plurality of components mounted on a vehicle, an integrated control system is proposed to restrain an increase in the integrated system development time.
For example, JP-A-7-108882 proposes that a control system includes a power train control operation unit, an injection control device, an ignition control device, a signal input/output processing unit, a transmission control device, a throttle control device and the like, by dividing a power train control system of a vehicle into respective functions. The devices except the power train control operation unit are operated by commands from the power train control operation unit via communication lines by connecting between these respective devices with the communication lines. Portions relating to a design specification change of the control system such as sensors and actuators are devised to be concentrated in the input/output processing unit.
Further, U.S. Pat. No. 5,351,776 (JP-A-5-85228) proposes to realize the optimum control over an entire vehicle by arranging control elements for carrying out control subjects such as an engine output, driving force, braking force and control elements for controlling driving characteristics of a vehicle in a form of a hierarchical level structure, and by supplying required characteristics in order from a high hierarchical level to a low hierarchical level.
In either of these integrated control systems, shortening of the development time is realized in such a manner that control systems of a vehicle are separated into a plurality of pieces with a view to shortening the development time required for a design change by lessening the number of control elements of control systems to be changed in a design as a specification change of the system, or that the parallel developments of individual control elements are capable of conducting by maintaining independent properties of respective control elements.
However, a sufficient reduction effect in the development time cannot be obtained by merely separating the control systems. That is, when the control systems are separated into a plurality of control elements, without setting sharing information appropriately among the respective control elements, a reduction effect in the development time cannot sufficiently be obtained.
It is an object of the present invention to realize sufficient shortening of development time for an entire system, and to attain optimum control performance.
An integrated vehicle control system comprises a plurality of component control sections and a manager control section. The component control sections respectively control operations of a plurality of components of a vehicle such as an engine and an automatic transmission following previously set control rules. The manager control section commands operational guides of the components to the component control sections. Each of the component control sections transmits a characteristic information of the components to the manager control section. The manager control section sets the operational guides of the components based on the transmitted characteristic information of the components.
The characteristic information of the engine includes at least one of a generating drive power (torque) characteristic, a fuel consumption characteristic and an emission characteristic of the axle drive source. The characteristic information of the automatic transmission includes at least one of a transmission characteristic, a shift prohibition/permission characteristic and a shift quality characteristic of the transmission.